Once more, God ordered steps to shout in my pain, and in a resounding way.
There are no such things as coincidences. My brother traveled to the coast for a conference. His return trip included a layover in our city, of all places, with just enough time for us to see him… in the parking garage, for 45 minutes 🙂
In that time, he told me about one of the conference speakers, @ElizabethEnlow. He was so moved by her sincerity, transparency, and message, he bought her book and read the whole thing on his flight here. He said he knew it was meant for my hands, so he gave it to me. God arranged a personal courier to get that book to me, at just the right time.
It’s called God In Every Season. I spent the midnight hours greedily reading. Again, everything in it seemed tailored for me and my present circumstances, and I couldn’t help but sob in grief and gratitude as I read. Despite my exhaustion and overwhelming emotion, I wanted to get to the assessment in Chapter 3 my brother raved about.
If you could see my copy of the book, you’d see each page covered in highlights with notes scratched in the margins and underneath certain lines. (I kept the tears and snot off the text and contained to tissues, and then my shirt when the Kleenex ran out!) I’d probably violate some copyright law if I tried to show all the excerpts that spoke to me.
Everything is So. On. Point.
There were four words I went to bed thinking about. The first was surrender. How many times have I thought and written that word since God first gave it to me. While reading this, I once more surrendered my husband to God’s hand, and myself to God’s plan – exactly where we both need to be.
The next was love. Ugh. That word. It means so much coming from the right lips, and so little coming from others. Like his reason for divorcing me versus the reason why I stayed committed even past the rejection of our wedding night. I wouldn’t feel slaughtered by his actions if I didn’t have this love in my heart. But the book reminded me of the Love that matters most. Main takeaway from tonight’s reading? The constant in our ever-changing circumstances is God is Good, and God is Love. Always.
That leads to the third word: intimacy. Aah! Yet another charged word for me. We didn’t have intimacy in any sense of the word. Every human wants to know and be known, love and be loved, for who they wholly are (good, bag, and ugly). He locked me out in every way (spirit, soul, body). There is no intimacy (aka connection, what he said we don’t have and supposedly left me for) without honesty (what he never gave me, or himself for that matter, even now).
And so that leads to warfare. The title of Chapter 1 is “The War Zone.” It describes the battle for man’s restored relationship with God. It’s what I told my husband on 10/6, that I wouldn’t let my marriage go without a fight. It’s what I told my son, that this was the devil’s attack on our callings and destiny. It’s what I’ve done through worship, whether physically on my knees or mentally by the posture of my heart. For him. For me. For our kids. For the future.
But because of her reminder that God is always good, and God is always love, I’m led to hope. These three chapters, and how accurately they describe my life, have given me a heart full of hope. I can’t get over how perfectly the season assessment in Chapter 3 fits me (digital version here). For some of the questions, I could select two answers, so I averaged the points. As such, I scored 20.5. Twenty is the end of Late Winter, and 21 is the start of Early Spring. After reading the description of each season, 20.5 is EXACTLY where I am at right now. That in and of itself, filled me with hope.
I’m not floating aimlessly in an ocean of darkness. There’s an order, a pattern, a rhythm to this life, and God is in control of the currents. I may be in Winter now, but surely Spring and a glorious future is on the horizon.
As if to punctuate that thought, the latest stranger to pray for me echoed Revelations 3: open doors that no one can shut.